The Negative Brain

Picture Credit: Lakshmi Ambady

If you hear a voice within you say, “You cannot paint.” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

-Vincent Van Gogh

All our encephala are wired for survival. Not for happiness. Long before our brains learned poetry, mathematics, coding, singing or how to cross the road, the nervous system learned one sacred art and that is to notice danger. This is the root of what neuroscience now calls negativity bias —the tendency of the mind and body to register, remember and to return to painful experiences more than pleasant ones. This means that over the millennia, the human brain evolved to prioritize threats and pain over everything else. This built in bias is called the negativity bias of the encephala (the human brain)- a term coined by psychologists Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman.

Let’s scroll back time to say 50,000 years ago.  For our ancestors like the Neanderthals, from an evolutionary perspective for the brain, remembering a threat like a predator animal attack was far more essential for survival than a cool breeze or a smile from a female. This is because for most of human history, our ancestors survived by detecting danger fast. A snake, a sabre -tooth tiger or an enemy tribe attacking could be fatal whereas sunshine or catching an animal to eat was nice but not urgent. An animal attack needed immediate action from the brain- to rush hormones into the blood and to propagate reactions in the muscles for escape and safety. As we know the brain thrives on predictions because it can be a lazy organ, this repetitive mechanism became continuous and normal. Today we still act from our primitive brain (the reptilian brain) and we get flooded with emotions because of the limbic brain. And so, our brain function over the years of humanity is still the same or at least the reptilian brain functions the same way today as it did for our ancestors who lived in the jungles and in caves. Our encephala are still primitive and archaic and hence today one criticism can outweigh a hundred compliments. Because the nervous system evolved to always scan for danger, react instantly to bad news and store negative memories more deeply and vividly than positive ones. This mechanism kept ancient man alive then and today it shapes our emotional psyche and our lives.

The neural machinery behind this survival mechanism consists of many brain regions that work at godspeed. The Amygdala- our alarm system reacts to threat, fear, anger and shame and makes us react faster to negative stimuli than positive ones. Signals are sent throughout the body before conscious thought which is why we feel uneasiness in the gut or trembling in reaction to a negative stimulus before the mind can give a reason and a coding to the reason for the reaction. Then the Hippocampus does a process called memory tagging where all emotional events are encoded. Then the pre- frontal cortex takes its role as the meaning maker and when a negative event is presented, its calming presence takes a back seat as cortisol, the stress hormone spikes. When this happens, fear, shame, anger dominate the human system. With the release of hormones like norepinephrine, they enhance attention towards the negative event and consolidate its memory ruthlessly in the brain, nervous system and fascia. The result- the negative experiences get written in bold ink in the brain. This forms a negative bias ensuring that this pattern of the brain behaviours does not fade easily and repeats itself to ensure survival. It simply becomes a neurological habit. A reinforcement.

But how does this negative bias of the brain show up in the body? This happens through implicit memory which is non-conscious. Tightening in the chest, freeze when loud sounds are heard, anxiety and vigilance without definite reason. These memory reflexes and bodily patterns appeared in the body before words formed. You cannot reason a reflex away, you cannot negotiate with a muscle, and you cannot make a thought disappear. Affirmations may touch the mind to an extent but the negative brain and the bias both control neural circuits shaping human posture, breath and consequently memory. The brain changes when the body experiences regulated connections, a stable presence, completion of fight, flight and freeze responses, completed rhythms of breath and movement and a compassionate environment. When positive experiences are allowed to land on the body, new synapses in the nervous system are formed and over time safety returns to memory and to the body.

The human brain is selfish and lazy. Selfish because it’s concerned about its well-being. It knows if the organism ceases to exist, so will it. And lazy because it keeps firing the same old neurons leading to repetitive patterns because its familiar and convenient to do so. But the brain also loves you. And negativity bias is a proof because the brain is telling the body- “I cared enough about you to recall what hurt you. I flooded you with so many hormones, so you recall what attacked you last. So that you could save yourself. And me!”

When you heal, you invite the brain to learn something new. Despite being lazy, the brain is also eager to learn new things. A brand-new experience to inhabit. This mechanism is called neuroplasticity. Because today we are no longer living in caves nor do we have a tiger to fight with. But we are fighting with the demons of our minds and that of our experiences with our environments. Healing is not about erasing the past but about training the brain and nervous system that the present is different from the past. And that the past no longer exists.

What we repeatedly experience with attention, it becomes structure. Therapy is about re-education of survival. Be it with Somatic Experiencing®, Family Constellation therapy or EFT. All these methods aim to change the biology of remembering pain. And pain is felt only in the body. Never in the mind.